by Moon of Alabama
The Taliban leadership continues to arrive in Kabul.
Anas Haqqani is the son of the Jalaluddin Haqqani and younger brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the Haqqani Network. He is part of the Taliban negotiation team in Qatar. Today he and a high level delegation of Taliban met with former president Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, the Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation.
Also coming to Kabul is currently Khalil-ur-Rahman, an uncle of Sirajuddin Haqqani, for whom the FBI offers a $5 million reward because he collected donations for the Taliban.
Yesterday deputy Taliban chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban, arrived from Qatar in Kandahar.
Kabul seems to have a normal day except at the airport where thousands still try to get out of the country. The Taliban let people pass to the airport but try to prevent a big rush and new chaos by holding off masses.
There were small protests today in Khost and Jalalabad where people took down the white Islamic Emirate flag and put up the black-red-green flag of Afghanistan. The Taliban soon removed the protesters and corrected the issue.
The flag will be something that needs, as many other things, to be negotiated. One could probably take the Shahada (‘There is no god but god’), which the Taliban put onto their white flag when they founded the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and add that, in white, onto the black-red-green national flag of Afghanistan. That would express the unity of the nation.
As another sign of reconciliation they today appointed Humayoon Humayoon, a former deputy speaker and a one time close ally of the fugitive former president Ashraf Ghani, as police chief of Kabul.
Meanwhile some are trying to form a resistance against the Taliban:
[V]ideos from the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, a stronghold of the Northern Alliance militias that allied with the U.S. against the Taliban in 2001, appear to show potential opposition figures gathering there. It’s in the only province that hasn’t yet fallen to the Taliban.Those figures include members of the deposed government — Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who asserted on Twitter that he is the country’s rightful president and Defense Minister Gen. Bismillah Mohammadi — as well as Ahmad Massoud, the son of the slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. It’s unclear if they intend to challenge to the Taliban, who seized most of the country in a matter of days last week.
The Afghan embassy to Tajikistan seems to support the move:
Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Tajikistan says, ‘with Ashraf Ghani having escaped the country, VP Amrullah Saleh is the legitimate leader of Afghanistan’.
Saleh is an old CIA asset. Around 1995 he was trained as a spy in the U.S. and then worked as intelligence chief, first for the Northern Alliance and later for the U.S. installed government in Kabul. There are many in Afghanistan who dislike or hate him for very sound reasons. He is not a good leader. Ahmad Massoud is not a fighter, too young and lacks credibility to be the head of a resistance.
To raise a resistance army Saleh will need money, lots of it and soon. But who would be the national sponsor he could work for? I doubt that the U.S. is interested to push for another civil war in Afghanistan. It will also not accept Saleh as another powerless Juan Guaido. Even India, which sees the Taliban as a proxy of its archenemy Pakistan, seem to lack interest in more struggle. There is also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with all Afghan neighbor countries plus Russia and India, which will press for no more war.
Still, the Taliban would be well advised to send…
Continue Reading